> my idea is that if we had an option to set "cut each word of bandname to
> 4-chars" than the directorylisting could look like:

I have a different idea for the same problem. Imagine your file names to be
the format:

$a - $b.mp3 where $a and $b are two different names (as you said you have).
It could also then of course be $a - $b - $c.mp3 and so on, the point being
that there is a separator being "[one or more spaces]-[one or more spaces]".

Then imagine a config system somehow that makes the $a and $b (and $c etc)
displayed in a different order:

$c - $b - $a.mp3
$b - $a - $c.mp3

or perhaps, as in most cases you know the artist already based on the
directory so you can skip the $a part from the display: